Software patents are worthwhile for worthwhile things. Last year the EU decided on changes to limit software patents in Europe that would have had an effect of limiting trivial patents that actively stifle innovation; the direct opposite effect patents are aiming to achieve. Now it would seem that a redraft of the European software patents bill has pushed many of the items that were decided against back into the bill, making it much more similar to the American style of software patenting.
There was a sign in my exam that read:
Turn mobile phones off and leave in your bags please.
Perhaps it is just me, but reading that I had a vision of the people taking the exam trying to exit the exam in their rucksacks. What were the people without bags to do? Perhaps revision has taken its toll on me…
These exams have been fairly hectic. This is mostly due to the very short time we’ve had to revise for them. We had to demonstrate a group project that was worth a third of the marks for the year just a week before exams started. This meant that revision was not even really on my mind until seven days before the first exam. This really is not enough time to become well prepared, especially for subjects that you haven’t studied for six months. However, enough of my whining.
In Gnome 2.6 there has been a fairly major change to the Nautilus file manager: it now sports a new spatial interface. This means that each folder is treated as its own object; it remembers its position on screen, its view and layout, any colours you might associate with it and so on. This does mean that each folder opens in a “new” window. I place the new in inverted commas because, in actual fact, it is not opening in a new window at all; it is opening in its own window.
Blogger has redesigned. I did decide not to mention it because it is being talked about by all the usual suspects. However, I thought I would mention it for the following reason.
One of my flatmates has every so often noticed my weblog and wanted to be able to write mindless drivel himself. I was going to set up some space at dx13 for this purpose. I never got around to it because it is just too much work for me to do right now. The new Blogger news came and went. Then I suddenly had a brainwave: Blogger is free, so why not let my flatmate use that. A few minutes later the first post went live. It's still in its infancy at the moment, but you can [have a read](http://mephistosays.blogspot.com/). I wonder if the posting will continue or whether they will fade after a while, like many new weblogs...
The new design is fully XHTML/CSS excellence with new templates designed by those mentioned above as well as some other very talented designers. If you’ve wanted a weblog, I’d recommend trying them out. The process seems much easier than it used to be; what have you to lose but your spare time and sanity?
I like this one: Amazon tell you how to hack your new DVD player to play any region’s DVDs. How glad I am to live in the UK where we are allowed to do such things, rather than living some kind of Crazy Draconian country (a.k.a the USA). The big record companies have way too much power over the US government.